Hasta La Ideas

Even though it’s supposed to be nearly 60 degrees here in Chicago today, we know it’s but a cruel tease the winter plays on us. So while we bask in this temporary warmth, we have also enjoyed thinking about a much sunnier, more comfortable season with the news of who has won PS1‘s annual Young Architects Program. You’ll recall that every year, since 2000, the MoMA offshoot has held a contest inviting up-and-coming architects or firms to submit ideas for what to do with the museum’s courtyard in the summer. This year’s winner is Interboro, a firm consisting of partners Tobias Armborst, Daniel D’Oca and Georgeen Theodore. Their winning concept is called “Holding Pattern” and plays off the original plans for the building itself, utilizing spaces that had been encroached upon the nearly 100-year old structure over its decades. Their plan involves a number of ropes strung above the courtyard, while also trying to invite the essence of the neighborhood in. Here’s a bit from their description of the plan:

“Holding Pattern” reveals this situation by stringing ropes from holes in MoMA PS1′s concrete wall to the parapet across the courtyard. In the same way that Hugh Ferris reveals the potential of New York City’s 1916 zoning code by drawing the theoretical building envelope, we reveal the very odd, idiosyncratic space of the courtyard and simultaneously create an inexpensive and column-free space for the activity below. From the ground, the experience is of a soaring hyperboloid surface.

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After a rough patch there the last couple of months for the Smithsonian, it’s nice to read a press release with something a bit more positive; and it doesn’t get much more lighthearted than video games. The American Art Museum has announced an exhibition to launch in mid-March of next year called The Art of Video Games, which will highlight both background art and interactive, moving pieces as well. Beginning this week, the museum has asked for a bit of curatorial help, launching a site for the exhibition and asking visitors to vote for eighty games from a collection of 240 currently considered titles, presumably with the interest of floating the most popular to the top, which will then find a home in the show itself. A fun idea, though we’re guessing the museum didn’t think it would be as wildly popular as it has apparently gotten. As of this writing (and observed last night), the exhibition’s site is still up, but with a note reading “Eek! Your enthusiasm has overwhelmed us and we’re experiencing technical difficulties! Please have patience while we fix this.” Assuming they’re able to get all those overloaded servers back up and running, you’ll have until April 7th to pick your favorites. Here are the details on the exhibition itself:

The Art of Video Games is the first exhibition to explore the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies. The exhibition will feature some of the most influential artists and designers during five eras of game technology, from early developers such as David Crane and Warren Robinett to contemporary designers like Kellee Santiago and David Jaffe. It also will explore the many influences on game designers, and the pervasive presence video games have in the broader popular culture, with new relationships to video art, film and television, educational practices, and professional skill training. Chris Melissinos, founder of Past Pixels and collector of video games and gaming systems, is the curator of the exhibition.

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Sorry New York, but Los Angeles is the new home of all things Mapplethorpe. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the J. Paul Getty Trust have jointly acquired art and archival materials by or associated with Robert Mapplethorpe, who died in 1989 at the age of 42. Cash from the David Geffen Foundation and the Getty supplemented a gift from the Mapplethorpe Foundation that accounts for most of the acquisition (valued at $30 million or so). So what did they get? Around 2,000 works of art by Mapplethorpe, including a print of virtually every photograph he editioned in silver gelatin, a large number of Polaroid works and unique works, artworks by his contemporaries and the most extensive documentation of his career, including personal correspondence with the likes of Patti Smith and curator-turned-collector Sam Wagstaff, whose own photography holdings the Getty acquired in 1984. “Both Mapplethorpe and Wagstaff contributed greatly to the field of photography, and adding Mapplethorpe’s work to Wagstaff’s collection is a fitting tribute to them both,” said David Bomford, acting director of the Getty Museum, in a statement issued Monday. “The acquisition also supports our philosophy of collecting individual artists in depth, so the chance to share a substantial part of Mapplethorpe’s oeuvre with LACMA is a wonderful opportunity for us.” This is the first time LACMA and the Getty have teamed up on an acquisition. A collaborative series of Mapplethorpe exhibitions is planned.

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Two new interactive works from the Internet’s creative powerhouse

If the big business of art makes you shed a little tear for civilization, the Google Art Project might be for you. Eschewing the practices of increasingly high admission fees (and the dumbed-down blockbuster shows that come with it), the Internet behemoth introduces a platform that transcends both the boundaries of geography and cash flow. While of course this digitized version can’t do what a well-curated show in a beautiful gallery does, the site’s capability to reach a wide audience and as an educational tool (not to mention the potential for inventive hacks) are hallmarks of Google’s approach to the modern online world.

Using their Street View technology, you can browse the museums—17 in all, including the Uffizi, MoMA, Versailles, the Van Gogh Museum and the Tate—as a whole (though some works are blurred due to copyrights). And because it’s all captured in high-res, you can zoom in on individual works and scan the entire canvas to see details such as cracks or paint strokes. Each museum is even offering one of their most valued works as a gigapixel image for a bogglingly detailed close-up views, and the setup even allows you to create and save your own virtual collection of art.

Thanks to the cooperation of the museums (Google approached each and let them decide their scope of participation), the resource also comes packed with videos from museum experts, extensive information on artists and easily-navigable floor plans. For the elderly, anyone else who can’t make the trip to see the world’s masterpieces, OCD planners, or art history students, the Project makes for an invaluably in-depth reference tool. To see how it works in full, have a look at the video tutorial.

The news of Google Art Project comes on the heels of the buzz yesterday about another artful online experiment from Google designer Alexander Chen, who turned New York’s subway map into a strummable set of strings. MTA.ME uses HTML5 to make the real-time subway schedule into an interactive musical instrument, stripping the map to a beautifully-spare set of colored lines with a background that fades from white to black as the 24-hour loop falls from day to night.

Roughly two and a half years after a flood ravaged the area, the University of Iowa is still finding itself fighting an uphill battle in trying to restore its UI Museum of Art. The building it had been housed in was damaged by the swelling Iowa River during a disastrous flood in the summer of 2008. After the water level had returned to normal and damages were assessed, the Federal Emergency Management Agency agreed to help finance the repair and restoration of the building. This would have been ideal were it not for the insurance issues that arose post-flood. Insurer of the museum’s collection, Lloyd’s of London, told the museum that given the chance of another flood, they would not take the risk of offering insurance again in the museum’s current location. When the University approached FEMA last year with a request to not simply repair the building, but to move to a new, less water-adjacent area, they were denied the funds. Six months later, the University’s appeal of that decision has also been rejected, with FEMA still arguing, despite receiving information about the insurance issue, that “the UIMA suffered less than 50 percent damage and that it could be restored to use as a museum.” Still putting up a fight, the university is now planning on taking the case to both the state-level Homeland Security office as well as FEMA’s headquarters in Washington.

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